Note: Dividend tap refers to the portfolio average monthly dividend which is estimated from Snowball Analytics.

Welcome to my December 2025 Portfolio Update. The "boring" machine is working: S$44k into markets, S$15k into safety, and zero drama. In this December 2025 Portfolio Update, I break down exactly where S$59k of capital went—building the bridge and feeding the dividend tap.

• C2PU REIT (Country Tilts): 4,600 shares, approx S$18,515

• IWDA (Core): 100 shares, approx S$16,626

• EXCS (EM ex China): 500 shares, approx S$4,280

• AAA (AUD FX): 78 shares, approx S$3,374

• BTC (Alternatives): 0.0136 BTC, approx S$1,499

Total deployed: approx S$44,289.8

Note: I also added S$15,000 to the Bridge Cash Bucket (BCB). This is a safety allocation, separate from the market deployments above.

December is when markets slow down, people speed up, and everyone suddenly becomes a macro expert over kopi.

Atrahasis did not join the shouting. Since inception on 1 Oct 2025, the job has been simple: build a portfolio that can fund early retirement without requiring perfect timing or perfect emotions.

So this year-end update is less “look at the return” and more “is the machine getting sturdier”. In December, it did.

December’s backdrop, in Singapore terms

When people say “rates matter”, it sounds like finance jargon. It is actually everyday life.

Interest rates are essentially the price of money. When that rate moves, three things happen:

1. Your safe options pay more or less. Think T-bills, SSBs, fixed deposits, and high-yield savings accounts.
2. Borrowing costs change. Mortgages feel it, and REITs feel it too because they use debt to own property.
3. Income assets get repriced. REIT yields are compared against safer yields, so REIT prices can swing even when nothing changes in the buildings.

I do not try to predict the next rate move. I just build the portfolio so it can live through whatever the weather decides to do.

The BCB is retirement insurance, not idle cash

The Bridge Cash Bucket exists for one job: reduce sequence of returns risk when I retire.

The dangerous scenario is not “markets drop”. The dangerous scenario is “markets drop early in retirement”, right when withdrawals begin. A funded cash bridge lets me spend from safer assets for a few years, instead of selling equities after a drawdown.

Also, this bucket is not sitting idle. It is intentionally spread across:

• • High-yield savings (for me, DBS Multiplier is currently yielding 4.1% due to me still drawing an income).
  • Liquid cash deposits.
  • SSBs (Singapore Savings Bonds).
  • T-bills.

Why I started a new position in Parkway Life Real Estate Investment Trust (C2PU)

C2PU is a healthcare REIT, and this was a new position for Atrahasis.

I am building the income sleeve with one clear goal: grow a reliable “dividend tap” with a long-term target of S$5,000 per month. Healthcare assets tend to be less economically sensitive than retail or office space, which is exactly what I want behind an income stream.

What I like about C2PU’s characteristics as an income holding:

• • Defensive demand. Hospitals and care facilities do not depend on consumer mood in the same way malls do.

  • Long lease structures. I want cashflows designed to be predictable, not constantly renegotiated.

  • Rent escalation. Built-in step-ups and inflation-linked mechanisms help the income stream keep up with rising costs.

  • Cost structure that behaves. Many healthcare leases push more property-level costs to the tenant, which helps protect distributions from cost inflation.

I built the position in three tranches simply to stay consistent without needing a perfect entry price.

IWDA stays boring, because boring compounds

IWDA remains the main growth engine. I keep buying it because it is broad, diversified, and does not require me to guess which region wins next quarter.

AAA, EXCS, and Bitcoin stay in their lanes

AAA: The main win is behaviour. Let distributions build up, then reinvest in batches. December was exactly that.

EXCS: A diversification tilt, sized as a supporting actor.

Bitcoin: A tiny satellite. One small buy, then back to real life.

Key takeaways

BCB top-ups are high certainty progress. They reduce sequence risk without needing a market call.

BCB cash is working cash. HYSA, deposits, SSBs, and T-bills keep it liquid while still earning something.

C2PU was a deliberate new income position. Defensive demand plus rent escalators fit the dividend tap build-out.

The core stayed the core. IWDA keeps getting fed on schedule.

Reinvesting distributions is part of the strategy. The AAA buy was compounding by design.

Looking ahead to January 2026

I am watching a few things, not to predict markets, but to decide where the next dollars should go.

• Dividend tap progress toward S$5,000 per month

  • Why: Reliable income reduces pressure on drawdown decisions later and makes the portfolio feel more self-sustaining.

  • What I might do: Keep adding to quality income holdings when yield and fundamentals make sense. This could include more C2PU or other quality REITS.

  • What would change my mind: If chasing yield means taking fragile cashflows or excessive leverage risk, I will slow down.

• Rates and cash yields

  • Why: They shape the opportunity cost between cash and income assets, and they influence funding costs for REITs.

  • What I might do: Keep building the bridge steadily. If cash yields fall meaningfully, I may lean more into durable income and core equity flows, still within rules.

• Simple rebalancing signals

  • Why: I do not want any sleeve to become a runaway train.

  • What I might do: Pause buys in anything that becomes clearly oversized and redirect new cash to the lagging sleeve.

Same process, new month. Boring is still beautiful.

Note: Dividend tap refers to the portfolio average monthly dividend which is estimated from Snowball Analytics.

IWDA (Core): 90 shares @ 126.73 USD, approx S$15,284
IB01 (Defensive): 110 shares @118.10 USD, approx S$17,000
SGX:HMN (Country Tilts): 4300 shares @0.940 SGD, S$4,042
BTC (Alternatives): 0.085003  BTC, approx S$10,479

Total deployed: approx S$46,447

November looked dramatic on the charts but quite ordinary for the Atrahasis Portfolio. Stocks sold off, then snapped back. Tech sulked. Bitcoin threw a full‑on tantrum. Underneath all that noise, the portfolio quietly did what it’s built to do: collect income, lean into weakness, and keep risk spread across very different engines.

The backdrop: a V‑shaped month and a crypto tantrum

Global equities spent November zig‑zagging. Early in the month, markets were down roughly 4–5% from recent highs before staging a strong rebound into Thanksgiving. The S&P 500 and Dow ended the month with only marginal gains, while the Nasdaq actually finished about 1.5% lower as investors cooled on the frothier end of tech.

Beneath that, the narrative was all about interest rates. Expectations for a December Federal Reserve rate cut climbed sharply, and longer‑dated yields drifted lower again. That gave Treasuries their fourth straight month of gains and helped stabilise risk assets after the early wobble.

The real drama, though, came from Bitcoin. After hitting fresh highs earlier in the year, it fell more than 17% in November and briefly traded near a seven‑month low, making this its second‑worst month of 2025. Heavy ETF outflows and short‑term traders bailing out did most of the damage.

That backdrop matters because Atrahasis now holds a small, deliberate Bitcoin slice alongside its core of global stocks, bonds, REITs and cash.

Global stocks: still the core engine

I kept feeding the boring core.

My main global equity holding remains iShares Core MSCI World (IWDA), which tracks the MSCI World index across 23 developed markets. Over three small trades in November, I added 90 units of IWDA at prices around U$126.

These buys nudged the portfolio slightly closer to my 40% global equity target without trying to time anything fancy. Markets were wobbly when I added, which is exactly when it feels least comfortable to buy and most important to follow the plan.

IWDA remains the main “growth engine” of Atrahasis: hundreds of companies, across many countries, all bundled into one very boring, very useful ETF.

Bonds: the steady ballast

With sentiment swinging back and forth on interest rates, the safer side of the portfolio quietly did its job.

• I topped up IB01 (iShares $ Treasury Bond 0–1yr UCITS ETF) with 110 units.

• IB01 sits in ultra‑short US Treasuries, behaving more like a high‑quality cash‑plus holding than a volatile bond bet.

Singapore REITs & income: getting paid to wait

Singapore REITs have been slowly healing as rates stop marching higher and yields settle back into the mid‑5% range. They’re no longer market darlings, but that’s fine by me. At these levels, they’re back to doing what I want them to do: grind out income while I wait.

I also continued to build up my lodging and hospitality exposure. In November I added more CapitaLand Ascott Trust (HMN), turning it into a meaningful long‑term position in the income sleeve. The exact trade details sit in the transactions section above, but the spirit is simple: keep leaning into solid, diversified REITs when yields are still attractive.

November itself was a classic “pay month” for Singapore.
First REIT, Lendlease Global Commercial REIT, AIMS APAC REIT and Frasers Logistics & Commercial Trust all sent in distributions. DBS delivered the star payout with S$1,440 of dividends on its own. Together, the REITs plus DBS added about S$4,500 of fresh cash to the portfolio.

Overseas, my US energy pipeline holding PAA chipped in as well, paying about US$170 before withholding tax. The Australian income stream continued too, with my AUD cash and bond sleeve generating another chunk of interest.

All in, November’s income engine provided roughly S$4.5k, A$560 and US$170 in gross distributions across the portfolio. For a month where prices mostly wobbled sideways, that’s a nice reminder of why I like having an income spine running through Atrahasis. Those cashflows can either be redirected into whatever’s cheap, or used to quietly bulk up the safer sleeves without me having to inject new money every time.

The plan here hasn’t changed: keep REITs and dividend stocks at sensible weights, let them do the heavy lifting on income, and use their payouts to rebalance into weakness rather than chase whatever happens to be hot.

Bitcoin: leaning into discomfort

Bitcoin had a rough month, dropping sharply from recent highs as ETF flows cooled and fast money headed for the exit. For most people, that kind of move feels scary. For my tiny allocation, it was simply a live test of whether I’d actually follow my rules.

Instead of reacting to the noise, I stuck to the script. I made a series of very small buys spread across the month, adding about 0.085 BTC in total — roughly US$7,800 of new capital at the time. No heroics. No “all‑in on the dip.” Just steady dollar‑cost averaging into a pre‑defined, capped risk bucket.

If Bitcoin keeps sliding, the position will stay small relative to the overall portfolio and I’ll keep accumulating at better prices within that budget. If it recovers, these uncomfortable buys will have done their job. Either way, the key is that this slice is sized so it cannot sink the ship.

How it all fit together

On paper, November won’t go down as a spectacular month for the Atrahasis Portfolio. Global stocks were roughly flat, tech was a little soft, bonds were gently positive, and Bitcoin was sharply down. The end result felt more like a sideways walk than a sprint.

Behaviour‑wise, though, it was an important month:

• Equities: I kept feeding the global core through IWDA top‑ups, instead of trying to outguess the next headline.

• Bonds & cash: Short‑dated Treasuries and cash remained the quiet grown‑ups in the room, keeping overall volatility in check while still earning something.

• REITs & dividends: Singapore REITs, DBS and overseas holdings combined to throw off around S$4.5k, A$560 and US$170 in income, which now sits ready to be redeployed.

• Bitcoin: The newest, noisiest member of my Alternatives sleeve reminded me why position sizing and rules matter more than bravado or vibes.

Put differently: when one risky sleeve (Bitcoin) went through a proper drawdown, other parts of the portfolio (short‑dated bonds, cash, income REITs, DBS) quietly absorbed the drama. That’s exactly the trade‑off I signed up for when I chose a diversified, income‑friendly structure instead of a pure‑equity rocket ship.

Looking ahead to year‑end

Going into December, the playbook stays boring on purpose:

• Keep funnelling fresh cash into IWDA as the long‑term growth core.

• Maintain a solid bond and cash cushion via short‑dated Treasuries and the AUD cash sleeve.

• Gradually build Singapore REIT and dividend positions while yields remain interesting.

• Treat Bitcoin as a tiny, volatile satellite governed by rules and sizing, not emotion.

In a month where headlines shouted about corrections, valuations and crypto drama, the Atrahasis Portfolio mostly just stuck to its script: collect income, rebalance on dips, and let time do the heavy lifting.